beacon

1 of 2

noun

bea·​con ˈbē-kən How to pronounce beacon (audio)
1
a
: a lighthouse or other signal for guidance
b
: a radio transmitter emitting signals to guide aircraft
2
: a source of light or inspiration
… the beacon to the oppressed of all countries …Adrienne Koch
3
: a signal fire commonly on a hill, tower, or pole

beacon

2 of 2

verb

beaconed; beaconing; beacons

intransitive verb

: to shine as a beacon
… Adventure beaconed from far off, and his heart leapt to greet the light.Maurice Hewlett

transitive verb

: to furnish with a signal or a source of light or inspiration : to furnish with a beacon

Examples of beacon in a Sentence

Noun These countries are beacons of democracy. Our nation should be a beacon of peace to people around the world. Verb a lone lighthouse beacons the entrance to the island's only harbor
Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
The brands are, after all, two of the best beacons of the returning trend. Calin Van Paris, Vogue, 8 Mar. 2024 Cindy stands as a beacon of empowerment, tirelessly dismantling barriers and championing women's rights. Kalina Bryant, Forbes, 1 Mar. 2024 Founded by Beatrice Dixon in 2014, Honey Pot has emerged as a beacon, offering innovative products and spearheading educational initiatives that redefine Black health. Ruhama Wolle, Glamour, 29 Feb. 2024 New York’s reputation as a beacon for artists was never inevitable. M.h. Miller Miranda Barnes, New York Times, 22 Feb. 2024 After all, that rotating beacon up above is designed to scatter light far and wide, not straight down. Tribune News Service, The Mercury News, 14 Feb. 2024 His advice serves as a beacon for current and aspiring leaders, illuminating a path toward a leadership style marked by compassion, integrity, and profound understanding. Kwame Christian, Forbes, 26 Feb. 2024 McCue was, and continues to be, a beacon for other women, beloved by guests and crew, and everyone who meets her. Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, Fortune, 20 Feb. 2024 More than just a party, Carnival stands as a beacon of cultural resistance, identity, and community spirit, inviting everyone to partake in its joyous revelry. Isabela Raygoza, Billboard, 15 Feb. 2024
Verb
Growing underground with their luminous flowers beaconing through the soil, around 90 species of Thismia have been discovered. Melissa Breyer, Treehugger, 27 Feb. 2023 In the meantime, January will beacon you into hermit mode, especially at the top of the month due to the Cancer full moon on Friday, January 6. Megan Spurrell, Condé Nast Traveler, 26 Dec. 2022 The thumb drives would beacon back to her Black Hills colleagues and give them access to the prison's systems. Lily Hay Newman, Wired, 26 Feb. 2020 Find My Friends seemed to offer me no warning whatsoever that its settings had been changed to beacon my location to her in real-time. Andy Greenberg, WIRED, 2 July 2019

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'beacon.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Noun

Middle English bekene, bikene, bekyn "signal fire, banner," going back to Old English bēacen "sign, portent, outward mark or appearance, standard, banner, monument, audible signal, signal fire," going back to West Germanic *baukna- (whence also Old Frisian bēken, bāken "sign, signal fire," Old Saxon bōkan "sign," Middle Dutch baken,(North Holland) beeken "signal, signal fire," boken "sign," Old High German bouhhan "sign, nod, portent, foreshadowing, banner," Old Norse bákn "sign" [probably borrowed from West Germanic]), of uncertain origin

Note: The older speculation on an origin for the Germanic etymon is discussed exhaustively by Anatoly Liberman in An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), pp. 3-9. Among the conjectures are descent from Indo-European *bheh2- "shine, give light, appear" (see fantasy entry 1), *bhou̯gh- "bend" (see bow entry 1), or *bherǵ- "shining" (see bright entry 1), with varying ablaut grades, root enlargements and degrees of phonetic attrition; and borrowing from Latin būcina "horn, trumpet" (used as a signal). Liberman's own hypothesis depends crucially on forms without -(V)n, as early modern Dutch baeck "beacon, lighthouse," claimed to be Middle Dutch by De Vries ("reeds m[iddel]n[eder]l[ands]") and van Wijk ("zeldzame vorm"), and Low German bak, bake. (M. Philippa, et al., Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands, on line at etymologiebank.nl, have it no earlier than 1559.) Liberman rejects the idea that these later words are simply shortened from the forms with n. Since *bak-/bāk- and *baukn- cannot be reconciled by ablaut rules, he hypothesizes that they are part of a large network of Germanic words built from the consonantal frame b-g/b-k that denote "objects capable of inflating themselves and making noise" (p. xxxiii). The Germanic etymon would hence have originally denoted a floating object (a bladder?) marking a channel, whence it was generalized to denote any kind of signal. The specific form *baukn- was formed by analogy with the semantically close derivative *taikn- "sign" (see token entry 1). Though the existence of the group of affective words that Liberman postulates seems highly probable, his inclusion of *baukn- in the group is questionable. Most notably, the forms alleged to have original short or long a are extant only in the coastal languages, Dutch and Low German, that could have borrowed the word from Frisian, where *-ā- is historically the regular outcome of *-au-. It would seem preferable to devise a way to delete the n (back-formation from a plural?) than to depend on a string of speculative semantic shifts ("inflated object that makes noise when squeezed" > "object that floats" > "float, buoy" > "marker, signal") to account for the words, even if this would continue to deprive us of an etymology. West Germanic *baukna- is not treated in G. Kroonen, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic (Brill, 2013).

Verb

verbal derivative of beacon entry 1

First Known Use

Noun

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 3

Verb

1650, in the meaning defined at intransitive sense

Time Traveler
The first known use of beacon was in the 14th century

Dictionary Entries Near beacon

Cite this Entry

“Beacon.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beacon. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

beacon

noun
bea·​con
ˈbē-kən
1
: a signal fire commonly on a hill, tower, or pole
2
a
: a guiding or warning signal (as a lighthouse)
b
: a radio station sending out signals to guide airplanes
3
: something that inspires
a beacon of hope

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